Dusk from the Briancon Sleeper

Night train at Chorge

Lac Serre-Poncon from the night train

Every night the train leaves Briancon high in the French Alps and arrives in Paris in the morning. Every night the reverse train takes you to the Alps. This Wednesday 17th July 2013, Embrun and Chorges will feature as start and end of a time trial along Lac Serre-Poncon for the Tour de France. Lake is great for swimming too. Details and booking from SNCF or RailEurope.

Dawn from the Scotrail Sleeper

DMB photo 2008

Leave grimy Euston at 9pm arrive at the edge of the Highlands next morning!Scotrail Caledonian Sleeper Bargain Berths start at only £19 each!. Bookable three month ahead.
Visit the walled town of Stirling on your way home.

Green ways to reach Berwick-upon-Tweed Walled Town

Starting from Bristol (but it could quite easily have been London - see note at end) a trip by public transport to the strongest fortified town in the British Isles - Berwick-upon Tweed - makes a fine short break. With the Border Country and/or Northumberland it can be the centre for a wonderful longer holiday or stop off on the way to Scotland.  Lowry loved Berwick for holidays and painted many views of the town. Berwick-upon Tweed  is a member of European Walled Towns for friendship and professional co-operation and was previously a member of Walled Towns Friendship Circle (see DMB Walled Towns Research Pages). 
Berwick is on three Sustrans Cycle Routes 1, 68 and 76 and is the centre of a network of bus services.
Photos and a note on rail travel follow.

Grey day - green ride to Chepstow

Happy New Year but what to do on a grey day in January?
Well from Bristol you can take an X14 bus (FREE on an English Diamond Concessionary pass) over the sea to Wales Monday to Saturday every daytime hour. See Traveline South West for the strange route and stop variations of the two operators - Stagecoach in South Wales and First Bristol - each takes about one hour.

Greenish way to Tenby Walled Town

Starting from Bristol (but it could quite easily have been London - see note at end) a trip by public transport to the walled town of Tenby makes a fine short break and with Pembrokeshire a wonderful longer holiday or stop off on the way to Ireland. Tenby is the founder member of Walled Towns Friendship Circle (now European WalledTowns) and home of Peter Osborne MBE Life President. DMB Research pages are at http://www.walledtownsresearch.org

Once within Wales train fares in advance can be  very inexpensive to West Wales. The art is to find a cheap ticket to Cardiff and then onwards (sometimes even on the same train: see note at foot of post).

Cuenca - just one place to visit in May June by train

Cuenca the town on the precipitous cliff (see photo) in deepest, airport distant, Spain is just one of half a dozen places that we checked out by train this year. In less than three weeks we travelled over to Paris (Eurostar) on to Madrid (by Francisco de Goya Sleeper Train) and arriving in lovely Aranquez (World Heritage Site) by mid morning.(see photo). 

We took a day out to visit historic Toledo (World Heritage City)with its grim past but great setting (photo) and then on to Cuenca (another World Heritage City), which is aiming to be Spain's European City of Culture in 2016.... (to be continued) nnnnn